ELCs on mind at donor meet

27 September 2012
The Phnom Penh Post
Agricultural production / Agriculture and fishing / Aid and development / Civil society / Economic land concessions and plantations / Government / Human rights / International relations / Land / Land tenure and land titling / Land tenure and land titling NGOs / Public land lease / Social development
civil society / Council for the Development of Cambodia / development aid / donors / donors meeting / ELCs / foreign aid / Foreign Donors / government reforms / Human Rights / human rights groups / human-rights reforms / International NGOs / Joint Monitoring Indicators / land / land titling / local NGOs

While protesters demonstrated outside, urging land and human-rights reform, members of the donor community met with the government yesterday at the Council for the Development of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to sign off on a series of development targets that bore only a faint resemblance to those recommended by civil society. …

Local and international NGOs have been urging foreign nations to withhold aid unless strict human-rights reforms are made by the government, but donors neither pledged nor suspended funds yesterday. …

While participants endorsed 20 “joint monitoring indicators” ranging from health to aid effectiveness to education, land and the attendant rights issues have been chief on many observers’ minds.

While the government seemed less than keen to touch on the issue of ELCs, Minister of Land Management Im Chhun Lim presented the most comprehensive explanation yet of the premier’s massive land titling initiative currently under way. …